had been visiting their father in Mexico and disappeared Oct. 13 along with Jose Guadalupe Castaneda Benitez, Erica Alvarado’s 32-year-old boyfriend.
. . .
Parents of the siblings have said witnesses reported they were seized by men dressed in police gear identifying themselves as “Hercules,” a tactical security unit in the violent border city racked by cartel infighting. Mr. Quintanilla said at a news conference Thursday that nine of the unit’s 40 officers are being questioned.

It would the third recent case of abuse and killing by Mexican authorities if police are involved. The country already is engulfed in the case of 43 teachers-college students missing in southern Guerrero state allegedly at the hands of a mayor and police working with a drug cartel. Fifty-six people are under arrest, including dozens of police officers.

In June, the army killed 22 suspected gang members in Mexico state and then altered the scene and intimidated witnesses to hide the fact that most were executed after they surrendered, a National Commission on Human Rights report said last week. Three soldiers face murder charges.

Judge Susana Barreiros scheduled the hearing while the court was not in session, having suspended proceedings indefinitely on October 14. López’s lawyers regarded the suspension as an attempt to delay the court’s response to the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detentions, which requested López’s immediate release on October 8.

Many Neves supporters, hailing largely from Brazil’s wealthier south, joked they would be packing their bags to flee to Miami or Orlando. Some posted images showing Brazil divided into two, with the poorer northeastern states which supported Ms. Rousseff hived off into a separate country.

One of two things is going on here. Either the super-fancy and well-worth-top-dollar New York Law Firm representing Venezuela at ICSID, Curtis Mallet-Prevost, has persuaded Ramírez they can get an even better settlement on appeal or the government is now so strapped for cash they’re willing to try any delaying tactic to avoid having to pay up right away.

Brazil’s benchmark equity index led global declines as President Dilma Rousseff’s re-election damped speculation for a change in policies that wiped out $553 billion of stock market value and left the economy in recession.

The Ibovespa (IBOV) dropped 2.8 percent to 50,503.66 at the close of trading, the most among the 20 biggest indexes globally. After tumbling as much as 6.2 percent earlier, approaching the threshold for a bear market, the gauge pared losses as education companies and pulp exporters rallied. The real posted the world’s biggest loss as it sank 1.9 percent to a nine-year low.

After years of weak growth, high inflation and intervention, Dilma’s re-election tanked the currency, too,

The real’s plunge to 2.5224 per dollar put it at the weakest level on a closing basis since April 2005. One-month implied volatility on options for the real, reflecting projected shifts in the currency, was the world’s highest. The currency sank 12 percent in the past three months.

“To some extent, markets were already pricing in her victory last week, and that may explain why the reaction to the election results wasn’t as negative as I expected,” Alvaro Marangoni, a partner at Quadrante Investimentos Ltda., said by phone from Sao Paulo. “We’re all waiting to see if policies are adjusted so the economy can recover.”